Month: April 2015

Going, Going, Gone

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Slowly but surely, I know I will surrender, and adapt to and adopt a few Aussie words and phrases, while some of my own may become extinct (like so many things in Oz). My six year old comes home from school with her new lingo each day; we all want to speak in ways we can be understood here, and some things they say, well just make sense, literally. Here are my current favorites:

“Chook” for chicken because I like the way it sounds and it’s quick

“Toilet” for bathroom/restroom because it gets straight to the point of what you really need and there often aren’t baths or rest happening in them anyway. I wonder in the U.S. why we’re so delicate about using that word when it’s what we’re really asking for?

“Tomato sauce” for ketchup/catsup, heck we don’t even have one spelling for the U.S. word, let alone where did it derive from? And although I probably never will pronounce tomato like they do here, the least I can do is ask for tomato sauce instead of ketchup in a restaurant.

“Dibby-Dobber”, this is short for dibber-dobber, but when the Woolies deliveryman called my oldest daughter this after she grassed up her sister for something, well it just stuck day one.

“Chicken Schnitzel” instead of chicken parm. I grew up in upstate New York and there’s no denying authenticity. However, here I was sadly disappointed with the parm as it’s a very breaded, fried piece of chicken with just a splash of red Napoli sauce and a sprinkle of cheese often served with or on top of fries (chips), and a salad. No pasta, or loaded in sauce and cheese like I like it. My workaround has been to ask for the schnitzel instead of parm and done as a sub sandwich, it’s more to my liking. Better yet, I just make it myself at home with schnitzel.

Now for the ones that so far are the hardest to get my brain around as far as rolling them off my tongue with ease:

“Dressing gown” for bathrobe. This is where the literal use of things makes me start reasoning with myself. Typically you put on a bathrobe upon exiting a bath, shower, or in my case needing an extra layer of warmth during this cold Melbourne weather. Most times it’s just a towel I put on. Dressing gown makes me thing of housedresses or housecoats my grandmother used to wear but didn’t go outside in. Now when I see little kids bundled up in dressing gowns at swim lessons, they start to make sense as gowns you get dressed in. I’m still not ready to let that one roll.

“How ya going?” for “How are you doing?” Now, this has got to be one of the most endearing Australian sayings I have encountered, makes literal sense, is translated similarly in languages like French “Ça va?” and yet I have a hard time making it come out naturally upon saying hello to someone.

Not so hard for my three year old who heard her older sister tell us on the walk to school that that’s what you say to people. Immediately she repeated it to one neighbor and then others, all the way down the street.

“Going” implies a lighthearted journey, being in motion. Unlike “How are you doing?” which seems a rather personal thing to ask and no one really wants to know the answer. It is also used by Aussies to gently ask you if you need help with something, “How ya going with that?”

How am I going? Some words as I know them are going, going, gone.

My six year old meeting a kangaroo.

How ya going?

The Mummy Factor

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The Walking Dead, I’ve never seen the show but I have played the part.

Many times over while undertaking our move to Melbourne, I’ve felt battered, bruised, exhausted, sometimes debilitated, frustrated, bleary-eyed, confused, jet lagged, and much like I felt during those first few months after giving birth to my two girls.

I had myself mentally prepared for what was to come down under. Yes Australians drive on the other side of the road, money is different, yes they have funny sayings that you typically don’t want to be on the receiving end of, and yes there will be general adjustments to how we live. Prior to our arrival, I even joked with folks back home about how our kids would come back with Aussie accents.

I was even looking forward to this linguistic adaptation, however was not prepared for the Mummy Factor.

One month into her new school, my 6-year-old came home with her class work assignment. She wrote my name as always, “Mommy”, and the teacher with her checkmarks went in and checked the correct part of the sentence, correcting Mommy to Mummy.

I wasn’t upset with the teacher at all; she knows we’re from the U.S. and she didn’t mark her work incorrect, just pointed out we’re in Australia now.

Mommy Mummy

Our entire family has easily acclimated to our new world. We embraced the summer temps when we arrived in January, we’ve shed our winter coats and regrown them (ok, the cats and dog have), and we are prepared for all seasons whenever we walk out the front door.

Unbeknownst to me, the thing I was not conscious of or prepared to adapt to, was the disappearance in the Southern Hemisphere of the one word that mothers can’t wait for their babies to utter, “Mommy”.

That classwork was only the tip of the iceberg that would eventually bring me to instant tears upon the realization that I would now be called “Mummy”, and with an inflection at the end typically reserved for satirizing Valley girls, or up-talkers (thanks Jerry Seinfeld for coining the term).

It’s a good thing she’s cute and we’re in Australia, because this had been a hard thing for mama bear to swallow.

I brought this up with one of the mothers I’d met at the kids’ swim lessons. She’s from Sydney. I told her it’s been a hard adjustment being an American mom who is losing her child to the Australian vernacular, just on that word alone. She thought about it for a moment and said, “I don’t know how mother became mummy, but it’s a perfect word don’t you think, mummy, the walking dead?”

We both burst out laughing in amusement and somehow the whole mummy factor lifted from a once heavy heart.

Top 10 ways Australians are badasses

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This blog generated from observing several things while living in Australia as well as being short on time for a full-on blog. Note, the term badass is subjective.

They:

  1. Do not wait for cars to pull in or out of parking spaces and will risk their lives including children to walk behind or in front of your moving car.
  1. Have the most tattoos per capita than anywhere I’ve seen.
  1. Talk like New York mob bosses with sayings such as “Yous(e) guys”. (Last time I heard this phrase outside of living in New York was going to a show for the Long Island Medium)
  1. Live without solid Internet service and are just fine with 5 Mbps.
  1. Have co-ed parent rooms in public places and baby changing tables in men’s bathrooms. (I told you badass was subjective but I think it’s a pretty badass thing as are the men who change nappies, and especially those with tattoos, changing nappies.)
  1. Elect politicians such as Tony Abbott who eat raw onions on TV without flinching.
  1. Turn in their guns after one mass shooting, instead of stock piling them.
  1. Install built-in bars, theatre rooms, and barbeques in their homes. (This is very common and adds to resale value of home)
  1. Allow the ginormous tarantula-looking spider called a Huntsman to cohabitate with them to deal with smaller creatures.
  1. Leave cause of death notes while they are dying in the outback from snakebite.

What next Top 10 would you like me to provide commentary? I am always open to suggestions!